While a jumbo tub of hot buttered popcorn is one of our most frequently indulged guilty pleasures, we think a good movie deserves a little better company than junk food. Try out our movie and meal pairings for yourself or feel free to suggest one of your own favorites in the comments.
The Movie: The Collection
The Meal: Green New American Vegetarian
See Also:
- Life of Pi and Dinner at The Dhaba
- Chow Bella's Gift Guide for the Gardener
The Collection
It seems like every gory movie has its pièce de résistance. Maybe it's a razorblade to the eyeball or a stroll through a pit of syringes or severing the Achilles tendon. The Collection, despite all of its flashing scenes of slicing and impaling, found its moment in Arkin's (Josh Stewart) forearm, which underwent a series of breaks and resets with accompanying crunching noises throughout the entire film.
The Collection, a prequel to indie horror flick The Collector, tells the story of a tragedy-ridden young woman named Elena who happens to look almost identical to Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta. She gets led to a party in some creepy warehouse, despite numerous pervasive news reports about a sadistic mass murderer on the loose. One thing leads to another and she ends up in a house of horrors--a labyrinth of booby traps and human taxidermy--and has to battle her way out. Meanwhile, Arkin leads a team of hired guns to save her, since he's the only one to have escaped from the Collector alive.
The gratuitous scenes of a wide array of stabbings and people getting smushed like jelly donuts bordered on comical, but in a way that wasn't completely atrocious. Even the Collector's breathy grunting and glassy shark eyes almost worked, and in an age of gore-centric film post-Human Centipede, that's about as good as it gets. After all, HC made us actually feel physically ill and that's pretty impressive. While The Collection didn't fully activate our gag reflex, that doesn't mean we're ready to chow down on meat anytime soon after.
Green New American Vegetarian
In the quest for flavorful Vegan eats, we always end up back at Green. Part of the reason is because we're addicted to the No Harm (ya' hear that Collector?!) Chicken Parm sandwich. But when we're feeling adventurous, their daily specials almost never disappoint. Past classics like the extremely popular Big Wac (a vegan Big Mac) and our personal favorite, the Jambes de Grenouille sandwich (fried mock frog legs), keep us coming back to that chalkboard.
This time around they were serving a plate of "ribs" with a baked potato and side salad. Luckily the seared tofu pieces used in place of pig were skewered with popsicle sticks, so we didn't risk any gory flashbacks during our feast. The tangy, sweet and smoky espresso barbeque sauce that smothered the tofu made the dish more convincing aesthetically and put it over the top in terms of flavor.
The side salad was a nice, light partner to its main dish. However, the baked potato was undercooked and under seasoned, leaving us yearning for a replacement side of those intoxicating thyme fries. There's always next time, eh? Plus we were able to stomach the guilt-free fare after being gore-afied, so we can't be too upset.